For many months, NewsBusters has been warning readers that the hysteria being generated by the media and the Global Warmingist-in-Chief Al Gore concerning climate change would eventually begin to impact energy and economic policies.
Following last Thursday's landmark decision in Kansas to not give an electricity producer a construction license for a coal-fired power plant due to global warming fears, more than a dozen states are set to file a lawsuit against the Bush administration for holding up efforts to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from cars and trucks.
I kid you not.
As reported by the New York Times Wednesday (emphasis added throughout):
The move comes as New York and other Northeastern states are stepping up their push for tougher regulation of greenhouse gases as part of their continuing opposition to President Bush's policies.
On Wednesday, Gov. Eliot Spitzer's administration is to issue regulations requiring power plants to pay for their greenhouse gas emissions, part of a broader plan among 10 Northeastern states, known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, to move beyond federal regulators in Washington and regulate such emissions on their own.
"I believe that states have to step into a void created by a failure of federal action," Mr. Spitzer said in an interview on Tuesday. "The global warming issue is one where the current administration has first denied the scientific evidence and only recently begun to discuss the matter in a serious way."
Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, in a statement on Tuesday, said, "New York State is moving forward on all cylinders to take aggressive action to curb global warming from both power plants and cars."
Although this suit is aimed at power companies, it is being filed more to prod the Bush administration to capitulate on car and truck emissions. Still, the move could seriously impact coal-fired electricity producers:
The regulations will seek to cut global warming emissions from power plants 16 percent by 2015, but that reduction is based on 1990 emissions levels. The regulations will favor alternative energy approaches, like wind power, and will not be favorable for coal producers. The plan will both cap the amount of emissions permitted and force producers to purchase allowances for their carbon emissions, encouraging them to lower their emissions.
[...]
"Of course, the renewable energy companies love this," said Judith Enck, a top energy policy adviser to Governor Spitzer. "If you're wind, you don't have to pay anything. If you're natural gas, you don't have to pay a whole lot."
"Anyone who operates coal plants is going to hate it," she added.
Yes, and likely anyone that uses electricity to power a home or business, for such regulation is guaranteed to raise the cost of this necessity quite precipitously.
Moving forward, it was rather telling that the economics of this matter got little attention in this article, and not until the final paragraph:
"We don't want to put more burden on the rate payers of New York, and the last thing I would think this governor wants to do is send the message that investment should go in other states," said Gavin J. Donohue, the group's chief executive. "You can build plants in other states and send the electricity back into New York."
As NewsBusters has been reporting, the warm-mongers don't want the financial and economic components involved in this issue to take attention away from the hysteria they're generating.
As such, and unfortunately, the global warming alarmism since Gore and Company released their error-riddled schlockumentary in early 2006 is indeed impacting policy, thereby making it a metaphysical certitude that your state might be next to fall for the scam.
With that in mind, citizens across the fruited plain should be asking themselves how much more they're willing to pay for cars, trucks, and electricity all to solve a problem that has yet to either be proved exists or can be mitigated by anything under man's control.
Of course, it would be nice if media were also asking such a question so the public could be better informed to make their own decisions.
Or is that asking too much?
